Statistically average and mediocre are actually about the same but cable afficionados have terribly wooley thinking and wouldn’t grasp that. These folks get up from their chair and swap cables and sit down again repetitively until they hear the divine speaking to them. It never occurs to them that something might be wrong when their components can’t reliably deliver a signal over a piece of wire and eventually to a speaker.
Instead of a focused microscope on the source signal, they think high end gear is supposed to be shoddy and unreliable so that every piece of wire and extraneous factor (power cord etc) should dramatically affect the presentation.
Instead of a focused microscope on the source signal, they think high end gear is supposed to be shoddy and unreliable so that every piece of wire and extraneous factor (power cord etc) should dramatically affect the presentation.